baltimorespokes

“There are two types of road bikers: Bikers who are faster than me, and me.” – Bruce Cameron
“[A bicycle is] an unparalleled merger of a toy, a utilitarian vehicle, and sporting equipment. The bicycle can be used in so many ways, and approaches perfection in each use. For instance, the bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created: Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon. A person pedaling a bike uses energy more efficiently than a gazelle or an eagle. And a triangle-framed bicycle can easily carry ten times its own weight – a capacity no automobile, airplane, or bridge can match.” – Bill Strickland
“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit however, it lasts forever.” – Lance Armstrong
“Let’s have a moment of silence for all those Americans who are stuck in traffic on their way to the gym to ride the stationary bicycle.” – Earl Blumenauer
“A bike is the world’s most used form of transportation” – David Byrne
“When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race.” – H.G. Wells
Continue reading “Quotes for the day”

Norwegian Motorcycle Union shot an advocacy video to remind drivers motorcyclists are out there. Maybe something similar for bicycles?

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Too many people have been killed by semi truck crashes and trucking accidents. Trucking companies need to do more to ensure that their equipment and their truck drivers are safe. Driving an 80,000 tractor trailer covering hundreds of thousands of miles is an awesome responsibility. Truckers and trucking corporations must be vigilant about safety.
Nationwide, large trucks (known as tractor trailers, semi trucks, eighteen wheelers, diesel, big rigs, or commercial trucks) make up only about 3% of the vehicles on the road. However, they account for far more traffic fatalities. For example, in Missouri, semi truck crashes make up as much as 15% of traffic deaths. In Illinois, tractor trailer crashes cause more than 10% of traffic deaths.
The National Transportation Safety Board ("NTSB") lists the following as some of the most common causes of big rig accidents:
* Poor Driver Training
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[B’ Spokes: According to NHTSA trucks kill more cyclists then cars and I would assume a lot of those trucks are driven by drivers with a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL). In general driver training/education is poor and material in the CDL manual is even worst. }
Continue reading “Trucks that kill”

I thought these were cute:


Continue reading “Hungarian Bike To Work Promotions “

[B’ Spokes: This is a great analogy by Tom Vanderbilt which I’ll skip to the end to emphasize his point but the full story is worth a read.]
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The airport courtesy cart is a wonderful way to travel. Who wants to walk Houston’s or Atlanta’s long dendritic corridors (dodging those spillover queues from Auntie Anne’s) when you could be whisked, in comfort if not exactly style, directly from security to your gate? Sure, there’s plenty of mass transit options, like shuttle trains and moving walkways, and there’s always good old walking (which I frankly find a welcome respite after four hours of impersonating David Blaine’s latest act of extreme deprivation in 12F), but who wouldn’t want that private door-to-door ride?
The problem, of course, is that if everyone wanted to travel this way, the airport corridors would quickly bog down in a teeming, thrombosed mass of Lagosian proportions. Airports are able to process huge amounts of people because of mass transit, or because they walk.
And I think there’s something of a metaphor here for the presence of the car in the city of the 21st Century. On 34th Street, as the NYC DOT reports, one in ten people who travel on the street go by car. And yet they are granted an inordinate amount of space, and they exact a toll in time on the vehicles carrying many more people. It’s not difficult to imagine the car, forcing its way through a crosswalk during a right turn (as so many do), as the equivalent of that individual courtesy cart disrupting the larger flow of the stream of airport pedestrians for the sake of its few passengers. Or the driver honking as he passes a cyclist as that shrill cry of “beep, beep, cart coming through” that so vexed Seinfeld. Imagine now if, at the airport, courtesy carts were given wide swaths of real estate in which to navigate, and people on foot were relegated to a smaller, crowded, space, and you have something of an idea of the routine spatial imbalance that exists in New York City.
As with the courtesy cart, the car is a wonderful way to travel — the problem, of course, is that it gets less wonderful with each additional driver. Beep-beep.
Continue reading “On Airport Congestion and City Congestion”

Brought to you by the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia
Early Bird Registration open until May 1st – Includes discount + free commemorative t -shirt!
Join us at Bike Freedom Valley on June 20th and help us celebrate a 30 year Philadelphian cycling tradition.
Your ride starts on Philadelphia’s historic Boathouse Row and continues for a day of biking on the family-friendly Schuylkill River Trail. Ride as far as Valley Forge or turn around any place you choose.
Looking for a ride that’s more challenging? Choose the 35-mile, hilly route on shared roads that returns you to the trail.
This is a full supported ride with four rest stops, snacks, mechanics, and even a keepsake trail map for a summer of exploring what lies just beyond the trail.
To Register or for more info see: https://www.bicyclecoalition.org/content/bike-freedom-valley
If you cannot register online, please contact Jill Minick at 215-242-9253 x3 or jill@bicyclecoalition.org.
Questions? Interested in Volunteering? events@bicyclecoalition.org